2008-04-19

So much to do and so little time...

It is true: life can throw you a curve when you least expect it.

I have some many reasons to blog about but I haven't found the time to get down and actually write anything. What has happened in my left? A lot... Lets see if I can make a short list of the most important things: I lost over 20Kg of weight (and got back up to shape by actually running over 6km every day); I've made a web site for my family's company (that is online and working without a hitch for a couple of weeks now); I've managed to get Gentoo running on an External USB hard drive so I can use the dead weight computer that the company I work for assigned to me while traveling to work on my things (yes, because that thing must have M$ Win...); I've been promoted; I've shown the guys in my company that simply saying it is impossible and giving up is not the answer; and a lot more...

Should I talk about it all??? Well, the Linux part I'll leave for another entry because I want to put up the instructions on how you can get a computer running Gentoo, or any Linux flavor for that matter, out of an external USB hard drive. This way you can escape the company man in your off hours...

As for the weight loss... I've always said that I would do a diet when I consulted a Nutritionist. Well, my mother went behind my back and scheduled an appointment with one. Well, I was literally out of excuses and went to the doctor in good time: my cholesterol was in a bad level; I was overweighted; I didn't have any energy or endurance. I thought it would be difficult, but with some discipline when eating and a lot of exercise I managed to loose a lot of weight. The main problem is that I had and I'm still wasting money renovating my closet... As for the energy and stamina department? Well, 6.5km a day of running should say everything, but I can add that even after running those kms I'm back to normal e just 15min.

On my family's company website: this is a project that I'm doing in part time or my free time, call it what you want. My uncle asked for my opinion on a budget he got from one of those web site building companies. The price tag was shocking, at least for me. It had many defects, it didn't fulfill their use cases and was really expensive. I actually considered opening my own company to make websites. In fact, I'm still considering it.

Making the website was fun. It is using all open source technologies, some of which I've used more then 8 years ago. It was interesting to see how far they have become. It was also fun to see if I could make it so intuitive that I wouldn't get bothered with problems with the site. Well, I guess I succeeded because the site hasn't problems, they just want more functionalities :-)

As for the company I work for: well, they are going down so fast that it scares me. They want to reduce OPEX (Operational Expenses, for those of you who never heard about it) but they don't even know how to compute it. They want to make tons of money but their first reaction to a client request is: "This is impossible! Let's no answer to the client and maybe it will go away." Come on people, lets get real: if you think it is impossible at least explain it to the customer. You may be surprised by the customer's knowledge and learn something while verifying that it is possible. Not to mention that you don't know squat on the subject you should first ask your colleagues within the company, just in case one of them knows a solution.

Facts are that I ended up having to travel to the customer and presenting my solution. Its a simple solution that I think the customer bought. At least they are preparing a business case to get things started. It seems that everything now is business case oriented... I always though we should be user/customer oriented, but who am I to think these things?

So, when I get some time I'll post a small guide on getting Gentoo running on an External USB drive and probably some other gems about: Web Services in Java, MySQL and Full Text Search, etc...